Citizen Journalism and Barack's 'Bitter' Aftertaste

What is citizen journalism anyway? Maybe it's something more definable by what it isn't than by what it is. Clearly, my column in The Washington Post isn't citizen journalism. But does this blog--done with no support from or attachment to The Post--qualify as citizen journalism? Or does the fact that I am a journalist make it impossible for me to be a citizen journalist? And when people get upset by "citizen journalism" what exactly are they getting upset at?

A news story from over the weekend prompted these musings. Barack Obama's campaign scrambled to explain comments the presidential candidate made at a fundraiser in California. Obama had said that working-class voters in Pennsylvania felt abandoned by both Republican and Democratic administrations, adding: "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The remarks were quickly pounced on by the Clinton and McCain campaigns and they dominated what is called the news cycle (as with a bicycle, once you learn to ride a news cycle you never forget). After having made up some of his Pennsylvania deficit behind Clinton, Obama seemed to sag in the polls.

The interesting thing from a citizen journalism point of view--and a detail that wasn't reported much at first by the mainstream media--was that the story was broken by a Web site called Off the Bus, a citizen journalism offshoot of the mighty Huffington Post. One of Off the Bus's amateur writers, Mayhill Fowler, had attended the fundraiser, as she had many others. She is a self-described Obama supporter, has contributed financially to his campaign and wants him to win.

New York University journalism professor, and Off the Bus co-founder, Jay Rosen has a very good description of what happened. He doesn't shy from asking--if not answering--the many questions the whole episode raises. (The New York Times has a good story, too.) Some of the questions being pondered: Should Fowler have been at the fundraiser? Were Obama's comments off the record? If Fowler is an Obama supporter, should she have reported his comments, comments that damaged his campaign? If she is an Obama supporter, should she be reporting on him at all?

Good questions, but I think they sort of miss the point, or at least confuse it. I'll get to why I believe that down below, but first I want to chew over some of the citizen journalism issues. First, for better or worse we are approaching a time--if we're not already there--when it will be nearly impossible to do anything in private. It is simply too easy to capture an image on a camera or some words on a recorder and then spread them around the globe. I suppose we could have something like the cone of silence from "Get Smart" but that seems impractical. Comments don't lose their sting just because they were said with the expectation that no one else would hear them. (Whether they actually sting is another matter.)

Second, when push came to shove, Mayhill Fowler acted more like a journalist than a supporter. She knew her story might hurt Obama but she went ahead with it. This is a powerful argument against those who see in citizen journalism nothing but rack and ruin. I'm sure that information can be mistreated--fabricated, manipulated, choked off--but so-called citizen journalists don't have a monopoly on that. Sadly, journalists do it too. What I find encouraging about Fowler's actions is that she weighed her options and made the choice that most journalists would make: She decided the ampule of information she could inject into the campaign discourse--Obama said some voters were "bitter"--was interesting.

It's my belief that many of the flaps surrounding citizen journalism--or the uneasy union between professional journalists and amateurs--could have been avoided with transparency. The controversy last year over the Cleveland Plain Dealer's bloggers springs to mind. A left-leaning blogger tapped to contribute to the paper's political blog was found to be a donor to a Democratic candidate. Wrote the Plain Dealer's reader representative: "You can't contribute to a political candidate and then write about his or her campaign, either as an employee or as a paid free-lancer for The Plain Dealer, on paper or online." To which I would say, Uh, yes you can, if you're a freelancer hired for your political opinions and you tell readers about your donations so they can judge for themselves how to weigh your blog postings.

Citizen journalism makes special demands of editors--they must be very clear how one snippet of copy on their Web site might be different from another, from a different source, created by a non-journalist--and it makes special demands of readers. All of us have to be more media savvy as we filter the information that flows into our lives.

Finally, though, I wonder how much any of this stuff really matters. There are, no doubt, bitter people in Pennsylvania, just as there are bitter people everywhere. Are we so sensitive that we flinch when someone says that? Are we so sensitive that just calling someone a "monster," as Samantha Power did, is enough to get you fired? I mean, come on people. Grow a pair. Modern campaigning has become a process of launching an attack whenever your opponent says anything remotely interesting, anything that seems to deviate from the simplistic bromides spouted in stump speeches, anything that suggests a candidate might not be likable, as if that was the most important quality in a leader. All politicians do it, Obama included. And that's a problem that has nothing to do with citizen journalism.

Bang the Drum Slowly: William Ludwig II, RIP

The perfect drum roll is a glorious thing. What starts out as a nearly-mechanical buzz may, at the drummer's discretion, pulse and throb like a swarm of bees. It becomes a living thing, a living thing that is more complicated than it sounds, for a drum roll isn't simply the rapid beating of left hand followed by right hand--RL RL RL RL. The most seamless roll is what's called a double-stroke roll: RR LL RR LL RR LL....

I've played the drums in rock and roll bands for 30 years and I can't do a proper double-stroke drum roll. Neither can Ringo Starr, a fact which annoys some purists. But someone who could was William F. Ludwig II, who passed away March 22 at the age of 91. Ludwig and Starr are forever linked in the annals of pop music history.

In the 1960s Ludwig was the head of the American drum company that his father, William Ludwig Sr., had founded. The modern drum set--as opposed to a bit of animal skin stretched over a hollow vessel--is a relatively recent invention. It came about in the early 20th century when the percussion sections of orchestras were called upon to create more and more sounds with fewer and fewer people. In the cramped space of a vaudeville playhouse or moving picture theater, there wasn't room for a snare drummer, a bass drummer and a cymbal player. One musician would have to do it all. And so the drum--and the drummers--evolved. A drummer's feet became as important as his hands.

Ludwig Sr.'s great contribution to drumming technology was a bass drum pedal that actually worked. Here's a photo. That little metal curlicue under the beater would have tinkled against a cymbal. The idea was to provide as many interesting sounds as possible. Drummers often had a tray of effects next to their sets--shakers, whistles, rattles. These "contraptions" gave the modern drum kit its nickname: a traps set.

Ludwig's pedal was better than the rest. He added a much-prized snare drum--the "Black Beauty"--to the inventory and the company flourished. It would never have been as successful as it was, however, if it wasn't for a sickly Liverpudlian named Richard Starkey. When he first joined the Beatles Ringo played a set made by Premier, England's, um, premier drum company. But American things were cooler than British things and when the band became more successful he visited a London music store and was convinced to switch to a set made by Ludwig. He evidently liked the color: black oyster pearl.

I can imagine that the young drummer wanted to advertise the fact that he had an expensive American kit. Why drive a Rolls-Royce with all the badges removed? So he asked the owner of the music store, Ivor Arbiter, to paint "Ludwig" on the front bass drum head. (Beatles manager Brian Epstein insisted that the band's name be painted even bigger.) When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in February of 1964 Ringo advertised the brand to the world.

Today, instrument companies make all sorts of deals with celebrity endorsers to help sell merchandise. They give musicians free gear, pay them a stipend, fly them around to conventions, anything to shift a few more units to young fans convinced that they can sound just like their idols if only they had the same equipment. The drum sets of these stars are often plastered with as many brand names as a stock car. But back then Ringo paid full price for a drum set he liked and he was the one who ordered the Ludwig name emblazoned on the front.

I met Bill Ludwig II about 20 years ago, at a vintage drum show in Maryland. He said he was as surprised as anyone when he saw his company's name on the Sullivan show. It was an appearance, he said, that launched a thousand orders. Ludwig signed a book on his company for me and then he picked up a pair of sticks, stepped behind a snare drum and asked the attendees to do the same. I slunk to a corner (can't do a drum roll, remember) and watched as he started playing a rudiment called "Three Camps," a leftover from when drums were vital pieces of military equipment and the distinctive cadence was used as a signal between different army divisions. He played by himself at first, his sticks beating out a perfect drum roll, then invited the other drummers to come in and join him.

It was a bit of a party trick, a performance piece he'd done countless times. But it showed that Bill Ludwig II could actually play the drums. And if you don't believe me, click here to listen for yourself.

When in Rome....

This is what it has come to: There is so much history in Rome--so many classical statues, so many hunks of fluted stone and finely-worked pieces of bronze--that a marble likeness of some Caesar or other is stuck in a corner of the Vatican Museum directing tourists to the cafeteria. In any other city he'd be in a place of honor. In Rome, he's lucky he isn't in a broom closet.

Yes, it's possible to overdose on the art and beauty here--possible, but unlikely. I haven't even started processing it all yet but it's nice when foreign places are, well, foreign, when they do things differently.

But I suppose stereotypes are nice, too. For example, in a way it's reassuring to know that all that blather about Heathrow's ill-fated new Terminal 5 and how the English can't build anything was actually spot on, as the Brits might say. We checked our four bags 90 minutes before our flight left then watched in Rome as only two of them spun around on the baggage carousel. Yes, the carousel repeatedly broke down and bored looking Italian airport personnel would kick it occasionally and then disappear, but after 45 minutes it was clear our bags weren't coming. Nor were the bags of half the other people on the British Airways flight. We waited in line for an hour to file our claims, cursing our folly at departing from Terminal 5. My bag came the next day; My Lovely Wife's the day after. But that's why hotel rooms have sinks, right? To wash your clothes.

What can I say about Rome that hasn't been said before, except maybe that it's possible to have too much Sistine Chapel. We went there first thing yesterday, shuffling in the interminable line that leads to Michelangelo's masterpiece. It's been cleaned since I saw it last, 20 years ago. It gave me a shiver, despite the room having all the ambiance of a bus station. Rome is much more crowded than last time I was here. We made our escape then tried to see what are known as the Raphael Rooms, a set of rooms painted by that master artist. But the Vatican Museum is like Ikea: It's set up to take you through a predetermined route from which you may not deviate. Every route includes the Sistine Chapel. What I mean is, to get to the Raphael Rooms we had to go through it again: the same meandering route, the same preparatory rooms (the tapestry room, the map room...), the same lines. It's enough to make you convert.

That's all I have time for now, blogging as I am from the lobby of a hotel with spotty wi-fi, listening to the rain on the cobbled streets outside. Yes, the rain followed us from Blighty, though yesterday was glorious and sunny.

Here are some photos to frighten you:


If that Medusa head doesn't turn you to stone, maybe this will:


Wow, it's so lifelike.

Pull It, Sir
News travels slowly here, so belated congratulations to all my colleagues who cleaned up at this year's Pulitzer Prizes. Six of U.S. journalism's top honors were awarded to The Washington Post. The nice thing is, each one was richly deserved.

Extra Kinky Sex Please, We're British

The headline in last Sunday's News of the World said it all: "F1 Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy With 5 Hookers." Some translation may be in order: "F1" is Formula One, the auto-racing league that's big business everywhere but the United States. The league's president is Max Mosley, a wealthy Englishman who just happens to be the son of notorious British fascist Oswald Mosley. That's what makes a Nazi orgy all the more piquant. As for what sort of behavior makes a Nazi orgy sick (as opposed to healthy?), well, I'd rather not speculate.

But I don't need to. The News of the World details it all: how the 67-year-old Mosley spent five hours (!) whipping prostitutes, being whipped by them and, almost pedantically, engaging in sex acts. Some of the hookers were in striped outfits reminiscent of concentration camp victims. Mosley barked at them in German.

Mosley couldn't deny that this had taken place, since the tabloid had photos and posted a video of selected highlights on its web site (since taken down, interestingly, though you can find sanitized excerpts on YouTube). In his defense Mosley said he spoke German not because he was engaged in some sick, twisted Nazi fantasy, but because two of the prostitutes were German. Ah, that explains it all. He was just putting them at ease. (The really sick ones speak in Esperanto. "Frappi mi nu!" Or, "Hit me now!")

The battered F1 chief isn't taking this lying down. Or, rather, he did take his battering lying down, but now he's fighting back. This was a covert sting, he said. And perhaps he's right. I can see a bunch of News of the Screws editors kicking around ideas on who to entrap and how, and being enormously pleased with themselves at coming up with the concentration camp theme. Perhaps Max had ordered the randy schoolgirl fantasy package ("I'm sorry, Headmaster, I won't lose my homework again") but when confronted with Elsa She-Wolf of the SS he just went with the flow.

Mosley got a little early support from the Telegraph's motor racing writer, Kevin Garside, who said it shouldn't matter what Max got up to in private with his privates. But even he has backed down after Mosley's latest maneuvers. After the Toyota, Honda, BMW and Mercedes racing teams wrote a letter criticizing the F1 chief, Mosley responded by saying he wasn't surprised BMW and Mercedes would sound off, given their history "particularly before and during the Second World War." You'd think Mosley would've approved of that history.

So, a wonderful British sex scandal, involving what all good British sex scandals involve: wealth, aristocracy, the delicate sting of the lash, along with a side order of fascism.

I'm fascinated by the way Mrs. Mosley--for there is a Mrs. Mosley--is depicted in the News of the World article. Jean, his "devoted wife" of 48 years, is a saint. Guess where they met? At a fascist rally. Lovely couple.

BritNews RoundUp: Model Behavior
It would be hard to compete with that story, but I offer Naomi Campbell, who yesterday was arrested at Heathrow Airport after one of her bags was lost. She allegedly spit at a cop who had come to calm her down. This took place at Heathrow's Terminal 5 which was unveiled last week with much fanfare and then quickly descended into a sort of Dantean hell. Mere hours after it opened flights were being canceled because the baggage system was all screwed up. By mid-week more than 20,000 bags had been lost and travelers were told they could bring only carry-on luggage.

The British love a disaster of their own making--they wallow in their failures*--but this one was colossal. What's worse, we leave tomorrow for a week in Rome. Guess where we're flying from: Terminal 5.

*(A side note: When we visited Dover last week we toured the secret bunkers from which much World War 2 strategy was planned. It was from there that the Dunkirk retreat was overseen. I had always thought of Dunkirk as a disaster, a broken army barely escaping from the Nazis. But at Dover the evacuation of 300,000 soldiers is celebrated as a great victory. I can sort of see it, since it allowed the British to keep fighting long enough for us to come and save the day.)

As bad as it is for Max Mosley and Naomi Campbell and Terminal 5 travelers, it could be worse. They could be Mischa Barton and be fighting the heartache of "dimpled thighs." According to the Daily Mail, "the slender 22-year-old's extremely pale thighs already appear to have some issues with cellulite." The horror.

How much do you love your spouse? Would you save him/her from a crocodile? Norm Moreen did. The Australian didn't just watch as his wife, Wendy Pethereen, was grabbed by an 8-foot-long beast. He jumped in the water, poked out its eyes and rescued her. How long before crocodiles evolve goggles?

It might be time for Glenn Crawley to get a new hobby. The 52-year-old from Newquay in Cornwall enjoys sailing. That's a problem, since he doesn't really know how to sail. He has needed rescuing by the local lifeboat team so many times that authorities have banned him from launching his 16-foot craft until he learns to sail. Said Crawley: "I'm just being victimised because I go out there and push the limits - that's what I enjoy doing."

Gargoyle of the Week


This rather agitated fellow clings to the wall of the Career Services building on the Banbury Road. Can't find a job? Don't worry. I will eat you.

Arrivederci
Blogging may be a little sporadic next week, as the family will be taking a Roman holiday. And we're visiting Pompeii, though I hear it's kind of run down.

How to Solve the Iraq Crisis

I've come up with a sure-fire way to solve the Iraq crisis. Note that I didn't say "to end the Iraq War." It might be that my scheme will allow the war to burble along for years.

My idea addresses one of the things that bothers me most about this conflict, I mean besides all the death and destruction. That's the feeling that the people we are ostensibly helping--the Iraqis--don't want us there. So, we just ask them. We have a ballot with a simple question: Stay or Go? If the majority votes "Yes, coalition forces, please stay," we gut it out in the fashion we've done for the last five years. But if the majority votes "No, thank you," we bring the troops home.

After all, hasn't this whole thing been about planting the tree of democracy in Iraq? (More on this later.) To critics who say, "Well you couldn't trust a vote undertaken in such circumstances, the violence, the coercion," I say, "Yeah, but there have been several elections there already. If you don't think the Iraqis are capable of voting honestly in a fair election on this issue then the whole thing is a sham."

Other criticisms:
Voting will follow sectarian lines, pitting majority Shia against minority Sunni and Kurd. So what? Am I wrong in thinking that the continuing drip-drip-drip of violence in Iraq might just be exacerbated by foreign troops? Does the disaffection with an occupying army transcend tribal and religious differences?

An election puts American foreign policy in the hands of foreigners. Wouldn't want that! Wouldn't want foreigners actually having a say in actions that affect them. But seriously, I can understand this criticism. A superpower doesn't stay super powerful by putting everything to a referendum. But when it's something that supposedly is done for the benefit of another nation, that nation ought to have a say, especially when that nation's desires are used--ex post facto, admittedly--as a justification for war. (I wonder how the Vietnamese would have voted....)

If the majority votes for a U.S. pullout, things could descend to chaos--I mean, an even deeper, more chaotic chaos than we have now. Yes, that's a possibility. But to be cold about it, why should we care? Iraqis would have exercised their right to self-determination.

Ah, but what if Iraq then became a hotbed of terrorism? This would only matter if that terrorism was directed outside Iraq, at the United States or its allies. Isn't that really why we're there, to, as President Bush puts it, fight terrorists in the streets of Fallujah so we're not fighting them in the streets of Philadelphia? But I haven't seen any evidence that terrorists in Iraq have tried to mount any operations outside that country. That's proof, perhaps, that Bush's "strategy" is working, but if attacking us was really an aim of the terrorists (and I don't think they're the monolithic group that word suggests) don't you think they would have tried something already, just for the PR coup?

Yes, terrorists attacked the United States. But they weren't from Iraq. The subsequent plots that have been uncovered didn't involve Iraqis. (In fact, they mainly involved Americans.) The 7/7 bombers in London weren't from Iraq. I think the Iraqis are quite content to kill each other without worrying about us.

But that does get us back to what this war is really about. It's only after the fact that it's been advertised as being about democracy. It's been five years, and my memory is kind of hazy, but I seem to remember the invasion being about weapons of mass destruction. Okay, there weren't any. Then it became about stopping terrorism. But Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Now it's about bringing democracy to those people.

If we really believe that, let them vote.

In Praise of Bush
The Guardian's Timothy Garton Ash lauds George Bush's diplomacy in a column today. He means the father, not the son.

The Fools on the Hill

The British love a good April Fool's joke, the press especially. You'd think the news media would be reluctant to take part in pranks, given the low trust many readers put in the stories that aren't meant to be made-up--and the frequency with which stories over here are assembled out of half-truths and lies. But no harm's done, I guess, and I'm in favor of anything that brightens our otherwise doomed, pathetic lives.

While flipping through the Guardian while on the bus to London yesterday I saw an ad for new technology from BMW: The Canine Repellent Alloy Protection system prevents dogs from peeing on your wheels by administering a 200-volt shock. The ad, as well as "news" stories about the advanced feature, were in other British papers, including Metro. It was a joke, of course, though PETA didn't find it very amusing. "The car company's choice of April Fools prank is not exactly in good taste," grumbled one PETAphile.

The BBC pulled a prank showing a group of penguins that have developed a unique way of migrating. The fact that the video clip was introduced by Monty Python's Terry Jones should have been a tip-off. The best BBC April 1st prank must be the 1957 "Panorama" report on the Swiss spaghetti harvest, told with the detail and specificity that makes good jokes work, and delivered in a straightforward Beeb style that makes you question how you could ever question it.

Here's a roundup of other April Fool's stories, from the Daily Telegraph. The Guardian's article on Britain turning to France's first lady for advice on stylishly dealing with problems such as binge-drinking and the collapse of Northern Rock fooled My Lovely Wife. That's the problem with April Fool's jokes over here: The papers are filled with such bizarre stuff, it's hard to decide where fact ends and fiction takes over.

London Calling
We packed in a lot during our daytrip, including visits to the Royal Academy and the Tate Modern. It was from that last venue, in a converted power station on the south bank of the Thames, that I snapped this shot:


The museumgoers taking a break on the Tate's balcony look as if they're watching the world's largest high-definition television--which I guess is what reality is.

Pullman, Transporter

And so last night to the Oxford Town Hall, where author and Oxonian Philip Pullman kicked off the Oxford Literary Festival with a reading from his new book, “Once Upon a Time in the North.” The slim novel is a “prequel” to Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, a snappy little tale featuring a 24-year-old Lee Scoresby, the laconic Texas “aeronaut” who figures in the later books. (And is there a rule that “laconic” must be followed by “Texas”?)

Pullman said that one of his favorite parts of putting the book together was collecting the little bits that accompany it, picking out the dark blue cloth that it’s bound in (an homage to his university?). Oxford is full of Oxfam used book shops and he said the listings in an old Shipping World Yearbook from around 1910 were the inspiration for the ramshackle Arctic port where the action takes place.

The new book, he said, is a retelling of a classic Hollywood movie he saw as a boy: “The Magnificent Seven.” He said of his novel, “This is not a Western, it’s a Northern.” It’s set in a frontier land where courage is the chief virtue. “Courage could be said to be the most basic virtue there is,” Pullman said. “It allows you to exercise your other virtues.”

One of the things I like about Pullman is that he doesn’t have to compromise any more, not that he ever did. He managed to make a long, dense trilogy about the depradations of organized religion into a best-seller. And though his new book will no doubt appeal to Guardian-reading peaceniks, one of the first thing Lee Scoresby does is pull out his revolver—even if it is only to bash a balky valve on his balloon. Lee is even revealed as a bit of a playa.

It’s hard for a writer to see someone as successful as Pullman and not wonder, How does he do it? What’s his secret? Pullman was very open about how he works, but of course the answer to those questions is that he’s very smart and he works very hard. He knows his Milton and his Blake, his Genesis and his “Treasure Island.” He’s proof that the secret behind great writing is great reading. As for the writing, Pullmann does 1,000 words a day, in longhand, and even if the prose is flowing like water, he stops before getting much past 1,001. “If it’s going well that’s a good time to stop because it will be easy to start the next day.”

He doesn’t start a project with a theme in mind but builds it from the particulars of a scene: the smells, the sights, the sounds, the “minute particles” that bring a world to life. He lets the characters develop on their own, sometimes being surprised when they demand bigger roles than he intended for them. He isn’t afraid of the obvious, either.

Pullman answered questions from the sizeable audience that filled the Town Hall, saying that, yes, he has interesting dreams but he never includes them in his fiction. Your dreams, he said, are never interesting to other people. He said his daemon would be a raven. (His illustrator, John Lawrence, had already drawn it.) And he liked the look of last year’s “Golden Compass” movie, a comment that suggested there were things about it he didn’t like. But there are always compromises in film versions of books. A book, he said, is like a democracy, where author and reader each cooperate and play their parts, the writer providing the ingredients that the reader assembles in his head.

“Why did Lyra have to join the grown-up world?” asked one attendee. Pullman said that to have done otherwise, to leave her a child, would have made her a Peter Pan. “And Peter Pan is a ghastly book,” he said. The His Dark Materials trilogy is about the loss of innocence and how something that some might think is sad is actually to be celebrated, since it brings special compensations, such as wisdom.

“Innocence is not wise,” he said, “and wisdom can’t be innocent.”

Speaking of innocence, I love this photo of a little girl peering down from the balcony in the ornate Town Hall, a human face almost lost among the putti and the plaster.